The Veggie

It is 2014, and I am a red-blooded, meat-loving American girl. So Fridays during Lent (the day we're supposed to abstain from meat) are a little bit tricky. Thank goodness, pizza makes those Fridays a bit easier.

Enter: the veggie za.

This was the last pizza of Lent in 2014, and although some sausage or bacon would have made it even more delightful, it was still a stand-alone excellent pie. And with no meat in the picture, the prep is super simple.

Above the crust:

• About 1 cup pizza sauce 
• 1 cup spinach, chopped
• 1 roma tomato, sliced
• 1/2 onion, sliced and sautéed 
• 1/2 red bell pepper, sliced and sautéed
• About 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Making it:

• Place a pizza stone into a cold oven and turn the temperature to 500.
• Slice and chop all ingredients as necessary.
• Place the sliced tomatoes on one or two layers of paper towel to absorb some of the moisture out of them. Believe me, this helps keep your pizza from getting heavy, wet, and soggy. 

• Heat a skillet with 1-2 tablespoons of oil, and sauté the sliced onion and bell pepper for about 5 minutes, until soft.

• When the oven has reached 500 and the pizza stone is hot, carefully remove it from the oven so you can begin to assemble the za on top of it. I know, I know...some fancy people use a pizza paddle and can swiftly transfer the beautifully arranged za from paddle to oven in one fell swoop. Call me primitive, but in Gloria's kitchen, that's not how business is done. 
• Anyway, place your prepared pizza dough for the crust on top of the stone. Pop it back in the oven for about 2 minutes now if you want a crispier crust. If you prefer a chewier crust then just continue with the rest of the toppings immediately. 
• Start with the sauce, spreading it evenly all around the pizza. 
• Add the spinach next. Putting it on the bottom "layer" will keep it from getting burned and dried out in the oven. I've heard of kale chips, but I don't think crispy spinach is a thing yet. 
• Add on the tomatoes, onions, and bell peppers next. Top it with the cheese. If you're sad about a pizza that has no meat on it, dry your tears and add more cheese. 
• Back into the oven! Keep an eye on it, but it should take 7-10 minutes to cook this one. You'll notice when the crust is golden brown and the cheese is all melted. That's your cue to take it out of the oven.

Slice it! Serve it! Add some red pepper flakes or balsamic vinegar if you're feeling jazzy! Such fun.

This-is-what-was-in-the-house-today Pizza

Thursday was a lovely day - one in which we ate too many wieners and burgers, had more than a "serving size" of chips and dip, drank too much beer, stayed out in the sun too long during the day and stayed up too late after the fireworks. That's right, it was the 4th of July! And what's more American than devouring enough calories in one sitting to feed a third-world country for a month? Nothing!!!

Okay, okay. I know it's oaky to indulge from time to time, as long as we're not doing every weekend to celebrate some holiday, birthday, funeral, long horrible week of work, short great week of work, casual get-together, etc. Believe me, I know that it is so easy to slip into that mindset where we make it okay for ourselves to eat crap and loaf around for countless hours time and time again. But try to stay on the bandwagon. Or at least if you fall off, realize that you can always get back on. And it doesn't have to wait until the new year or even until Monday. It can start with your next meal.

So even though I did eat mostly junk food on the 4th, I'm not ready to do another vegetable cleanse. Part of the reason for that is simply because I don't have too much in the fridge right now and I have even less motivation to go to the grocery store to correct that problem. But I do have a few things, and those happen to be enough to make a relatively healthy pizza. Here we go veggie pizza!

Pizza toppings:

• 8 baby portobello mushrooms
• 10-15 baby carrots
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinaigrette
• 2 cups of fresh spinach, chopped
• 1 6-oz. jar artichoke hearts
• 1/4 cup grated sharp cheddar
• 1/4 cup shredded Mexican cheese
• 1-2 cups pizza sauce  

My preferred artichoke brand right now is Progresso

Prepare those darn veggies like this:

• Preheat your oven to 425. Chop up the baby carrots into thin strips and toss them in the balsamic. spread them out onto a jelly roll pan and bake in the oven until they are tender, about 20-25 minutes. 
• Heat up a skillet with a touch of olive oil. Clean, dry, and chop the portobellos. Sauté those shrooms for about 5-7 minutes, adding in any spices you care for. Usually just some salt and pepper will do. Lots of water will come out of them. It's just what mushrooms do. Drain off the water or transfer them to a smaller dish, sans water.
• Chop the artichoke hearts into smaller pieces.

Okay. Your toppings are ready. Be sure you chopped that spinach a little bit too. Now...

• Place the pizza stone in the oven and turn the temperature to 500 degrees. If it's still at 425 from making the carrots, that's probably okay. If you could allow the oven to cool a bit, put the stone in, and then turn it to 500, that would be even better. Or you could just put the stone in when you make the carrots and continue heating it at this point. When you put the stone into a hot oven you run the risk of breaking it. Or rather, it will break all by its little ol' self in all that heat. It needs to gradually reach that temperature. Still not using a pizza stone? F-you. 
• Roll out some pizza dough and cut it to the shape of the pizza stone (or slightly smaller). 
• When the stone has reached 500 degrees, take it out of the oven, place it on your work surface, put the prepared dough on top, and spread the sauce around evenly on it. 
• On with the toppings! Roasted carrots, mushrooms, artichokes, and then all those lovely cheeses. I know I used a very random assortment of cheeses on this here za, but like the title of the post, it was what I had on hand. 
• Into the hot oven and set the timer for about 10 minutes. Could be done in 8, could be 12. Just keep an eye on it, especially with that spinach on there, because those leaves tend to dry out quick and even burn. 

Soup, salad, and pizza for two!

And just look at how rustic that pizza turned out! Actually, I think "rustic" is just a nice way of saying, "deformed." I was definitely hungry to eat this one because I definitely burned my mouth on my first slice. After it cooled down a bit I could actually enjoy the tastiness. All in all, this was a very vegetabley dinner that was really yummy. I never used to think I could enjoy so many veggies all in one meal as much as I did with this one. Maybe it was the added cheese on top of it all. Hm. 

A fresh salad and some of my Nordstrom's tomato basil soup that I had leftover in the fridge went really well with the pizza too. The soup is actually made with lots of carrots, which is probably why it complimented the carrot-topped pizza so well. 

Go on, take a bite...

You may be thinking that the Mexican cheese on the pizza is out of place and slightly freakin' weird. Yes. That's sort of true. But believe me, it was good. It was a small amount of cheese so the few Mexican-ish spices in there were hardly even detectable. Even if you can taste them a bit, they add a hint of warm spiciness that just goes well with the other flavors. No, you don't have to use Mexican cheeses. You can use mozzarella, more cheddar, or whatever else you care for. 

Veggie & Herb Pizza

I've been on a real fruit and veggie kick this week. Now if you know me, you probably know that I eat a lot of these foods a lot of the time. But this week my husband is out of town, off doing military things, so I've really taken the opportunity to up my raw and cooked veggie intake. Not that he doesn't eat these things...he'll eat basically anything I put in front of him, given, most of the things I put in front of him are quite tasty. But a life without meats would not be a life he would enjoy living.

So anyway, I started the week trying to do only fruits and veggies. It was all spinach, avocados, lentils, onions, tomatoes, bananas, grapes, plain almonds, and more. I'm pretty good at making a green smoothie, so that was a staple. Then when it came to beans and dinnertime foods I used spices to make them taste edible. Basically what I cut out was dairy, meat, and alcohol. That was all going surprisingly well, but I had some chicken breast, milk, and homemade bread in the fridge, and I didn't want to ignore those until they became rotten. Hence, my complete fruit and vegetable binge ended after about 2 days. And honestly, I think that was just the perfect time for that sort of thing. 

I'm not one to do those extreme diets. Actually, I'm very against any fad that tells you to eliminate one or more major food group. If you can't maintain eating patterns like that for a lifetime, then chances are it's a fad diet and you should avoid it. 

But no matter what you do, you can't go wrong with more veggies in your diet. They are just so good for you and the greater variety you get (both in type and color), the better. They've got tons of vitamins and minerals - most of which will not be destroyed during cooking - that help with growth, development, and repair. Your mom told you to eat your veggies after all, didn't she? She was onto something. 

So instead of going and bingeing on meats and cheeses at the end of the week to mourn my brief separation from these foods earlier in the week, I made a pizza covered in summer veggies. And some cheese too.

Ingredients needed for the topping:

• 1 shallot
• 1 zucchini 
• 1 yellow squash
• A handful of bell peppers. I used red, yellow, and orange ones.

I was considering doing a cheese-less pizza here, but then I remembered a time when I actually ordered a cheese-less pizza at a restaurant in Atlanta and I remembered that I didn't like it.

Cheeses I used on this one:

• 1/2 cup shredded asiago 
• 1/2 cup shredded parmesan
• 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella

Now keep in mind, those are some very flavorful (read, strong and pungent-smelling) cheeses. Especially the asiago. Adjust to your taste preferences. 

So here's the prep method:

• Toss about 2 tbsp. olive oil into a skillet. I love my iron skillet. I love it so much, in fact, I never put it away. It's always on my stovetop just waiting to make food yummy. So heat that oil, finely chop your shallot, and sauté it for a few minutes.
• In the meantime, slice the rest of your veggies. You don't have to stick to the ones that I did...I think other delightful picks for this za would include mushrooms, asparagus, spinach, and tomatoes. 
• Now add a few herbs of your choosing to the pan. I used a little thyme, allspice, and cayenne pepper. I'd also suggest rosemary, garlic, sage, cumin, black pepper, and basil - in any amount or quantity that you prefer.
• Top it all onto your dough (which should have sauce on it and be sitting on a hot pizza stone). Add veggies, then sprinkle on the cheeses and bake it for about 10 minutes.

My dough was a little bit thick this time, so it took about 12 minutes in my oven. I could tell it was done when the cheese was bubbly and the veggies were slightly charred. 

The only thing I would have done differently next time is add more veggies! I did put a lot on there, but then again, the pizza itself was quite large. I wanted to "play it safe" because I have prepped too many toppings for pizzas in the past and I did not want to have leftovers...after all, my human garbage-disposer husband is out of town. But I regret that now, because I could have easily chopped up all of both types of squash and added another handful of bell peppers and it would have been great. Oh well, we learn these things as we go!

I sprinkled a little red pepper flakes over the top and then drizzled my slice in balsamic vinegar. Very flavorful. Probably even a little too much with the balsamic, but still really good.

And I was such a rebel while eating it too - I ate in front of the TV!! *Gasp!!*